The Facts:
Synopsis: Facing threats to his kingdom and his family, Vlad Tepes makes a deal with dangerous supernatural forces – whilst trying to avoid succumbing to the darkness himself.
Stars: Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Diarmaid Murtagh, Dominic Cooper, Charles Dance
Director: Gary Shore
Rated: PG-13
Running Length: 92 minutes
Trailer Review: Here
TMMM Score: (6.5/10)
Review: When it comes to films about Dracula I’m a, well, sucker. I’m not sure where this childhood fascination came with the fanged count began but one need only look at my sequential years of Halloween costume pictures where I sported a black cape and a set of too big for my mouth fangs that eventually fit perfectly to see that there was nary a vampire vein I wasn’t willing to open.
Vampires have had their fair share of cinematic excursions over the decades in pretty much every genre in existence. From the Bela Lugosi original to Christopher Lee’s long tenure for Hammer Studios to Chris Sarandon’s menacing 80s hunk of Fright Night and Gary Oldman’s highly stylized take on the count for Francis Ford Coppola, vampires had come a long way…only to be reduced to romantic glittery naval gazers in the Twilight films. The makers of Dracula Untold are counting on the big guy having a little blood left to feed the masses and it’s nice to report that while there isn’t a feast to be had, what’s on the plate is more satisfying than one would imagine.
The good thing about Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless’s script is that it doesn’t feel like an outright “Dracula Project”. I get the impression they used the legend of Vlad the Impaler as a jumping off point for their leather and sword action pic and went back later to add more mythology, fangs, and bloodletting to the mix. However they approached it, the film as a whole works surprisingly well because it has a strong backbone to support it during some of the less successful moments involving iffy special effects and an overstuffed ending leading to an unnecessary epilogue.
Leading the cast as the man who would become a vampire legend is Luke Evans who possesses the Eastern European looks to suggest a denizen of Transylvania but the British accent that makes one wonder if Prince Vlad was educated at Oxford. Yes, friends, this is another of those movies set in a district where the UK dialect doesn’t make any sort of sense yet is widely employed by all who cross the screen. Evans (The Raven) brings a considerable assuredness to Vlad, painting him as a one-time impaling warrior now content to rule his kingdom in peace with his lovely wife (Sarah Gadon, Enemy, with bosom appropriately heaving and on display) and son.
When a Turkish sultan and former comrade (a not the least bit believable Dominic Cooper, Need for Speed, sporting enough eyeliner to write a short story) demands Vlad provide 1,000 boys (including his own progeny) as soldiers for his army, he refuses and incurs the impending wrath of destruction against his kingdom. Turning to a mysterious figure (Charles Dance) that haunts a lonely mountain, Vlad is given the power of the vampire and has three days to reverse the effects while using his newfound power to destroy his enemy.
Director Gary Shore keeps the first half of the movie flowing nicely as a well-executed origin story that’s more interesting than it has any right to be. With some handsome scenery and nicely constructed set pieces (no RenFest rickety buildings here, thank you very much) there’s an agreeable momentum built by all as Vlad moves toward the dark side of his growing vampiric prowess. It’s only when it devolves into blurry battle sequences that mythology gets thrown out of the door in favor of some carefully edited PG-13 violence. For a film about the famed blood drinker, there’s precious little of the red stuff on display.
Feeling longer than its 92 minutes, Dracula Untold still manages to keep pace with our expectations for most of its running length. Aside from the aforementioned unfortunate epilogue that represents both one ending too many and some obvious studio sequel pressure, by and large this is one Dracula story that earns its telling.